Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called out the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion over its in­ac­tion, fol­low­ing T&T’s spate of killings be­ing car­ried with il­le­gal weapons and she’s warned that the Op­po­si­tion won’t sup­port Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed changes to the Firearms Act, which in­cludes re­strict­ing where peo­ple can car­ry their le­gal firearms.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed this at last night’s UNC meet­ing at Brazil High School in La Hor­quet­ta.

Not­ing the lat­est spate of vi­o­lence, last Sun­day’s killings of four peo­ple and wound­ing of eight in Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Non-stop crime, vi­o­lence and de­mon­ic blood­let­ting in T&T un­der this Gov­ern­ment! It is top-down crime!

“Look at what’s hap­pened in Co­corite! In light of that mas­sacre and on­go­ing crime in com­mu­ni­ties all around T&T, I call on the Gov­ern­ment to tell the coun­try what­ev­er be­came of the An­tho­ny Watkins Com­mit­tee they ap­point­ed in 2020 to in­ves­ti­gate crime in de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties … and the Prime Min­is­ter says ‘it could be worse’.”

She added, “In one of his many gim­micks to put off deal­ing with crime hor­ror, Row­ley, in Ju­ly 2020, an­nounced this com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine crime in hotspots. The coun­try nev­er heard again about that com­mit­tee, its rec­om­men­da­tions, or the Gov­ern­ment’s adop­tion of those mea­sures...tell us!”

“But since March this year, there have been three mass shoot­ings with il­le­gal firearms ... and I’m told, from last Fri­day morn­ing to Mon­day 6 pm, there were 17 shoot­ings and out of those 17, 11 peo­ple were killed this week­end ... when you look at those pho­tos, you won­der if we’re in Gaza! Yet we have a Prime Min­is­ter miss­ing in ac­tion...what’s hap­pened since the Cari­com crime sym­po­sium too? There have been 47 mur­ders per month in T&T, last year it was av­er­age 45 so there’s been an in­crease.”

Not­ing in­creased home in­va­sions, in­clud­ing where politi­cian/ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza was a vic­tim, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC wouldn’t sup­port pro­posed changes to the Firearms law (which was the sub­ject of a let­ter from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er).

She said De Souza was tied up, beat­en with a gun, and threat­ened that she would be shot.

“And you want to tell me, you don’t want to give le­gal guns? We’ll fight that and nev­er sup­port these amend­ments to the Firearms law! This wicked Gov­ern­ment is bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment to make it much hard­er to ac­cess le­gal firearms.”

“They’re do­ing every­thing they can to help crim­i­nals at­tack you —rec­om­mend­ing gun-free zones —Par­lia­ment, courts, schools, col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties, child care cen­tres, bars, banks, places of wor­ship, and any gov­ern­ment or pri­vate build­ings de­clared by the min­is­ter. Ba­si­cal­ly, they’re say­ing you can­not have a le­gal firearm in any of these places, so you’ll have to leave it at home if you’re go­ing to the bank or to your child’s school to pick them up.”